Someone to Share it With
by Gauss
Summary: The Story of Myn Donos and Lara Notsil in the aftermath of the novel Solo Command. Completed Dec. 11, 2003
1. Lost

Disclaimer:  I don't own any of the characters in this story.  They are the creation of George Lucas, Aaron Allston and Michael A. Stackpole.  I'm just borrowing 'em for a moment to vent a little of my own creative energy.  No profit is being made from this story, and no breach of trademark or copyright is intended.  Kirney's recording is the creation of Aaron Allston.

Chapter 1:

_You can't look dignified if you're having fun._  Wes' words drove through Myn's alcohol-fogged mind as he walked, tiredly, into his quarters.  At this moment, he looked anything but dignified.

So, he must have been having fun.

The bright, new patch on his shoulder labeling him as a member of Rogue Squadron seemed so much _newer_ than the rest of his uniform.  He decided that he liked it.  He would miss his squadmates on Wraith squadron, but his new team, the Rogues, seemed more, _him_, somehow.  Like he fit there in a way he had never quite fit with the Wraiths.

He had a message on his console.  He ignored it for the moment, since it almost certainly wasn't anything which required his immediate attention.  Nobody in their right mind seriously expected him to respond tonight anyway.

The massive celebration of the "dissolution" of Wraith Squadron, as well as the defeat of Zsinj would still be going this time tomorrow night.  Wedge also had reason to celebrate.  He'd been allowed to dodge a promotion to General.  Myn had joined them for most of the night, but had politely excused himself.  He needed a moment to reflect on everything that he'd been given in the last few days.

And everything that he'd lost.

_Lara._

Three days ago, Lara Nostil, or Gara Petothel, or whatever her real name had been was working alongside Zsinj, she'd been an enemy, but she'd been alive.

Now, she was dead, killed saving Wedge Antilles.

As justice went, it wasn't unpoetic.

If, that is, justice was what you were after.

It had taken Myn a long time to accept that he no longer wanted justice for Talon Squadron.  It had taken him longer to accept that he didn't even want Lara Nostil, a woman he'd come to admire; perhaps even, he had to admit to himself, to love; punished for her role in their slaughter.

Instead, he would honour the sacrifice of Talon Squadron in the only way that mattered: by being worthy of it.

Perhaps, with the death of Gara Petothel, the souls of Talon Squadron had found some peace.  His own, however, had not.  It was as if in the last few days he'd both gained and lost everything that really mattered.

He'd gained his self respect, the respect of his comrades, and a place in life.

But he'd lost Lara.

No matter how many times he turned it over in his mind, he always came back to that.  What does it matter that you've found your place in life if you have nobody to share it with?

He sighed, heavily.  He would find someone, he supposed.  Someone who would add that missing piece to his life.

That knowledge did little to lift the weight on his heart; or to replace the piece that was missing right now.

He looked at the data stream that came with the message on his console.  It had been sent by a woman named Kirney Slane on Corellia.

_Do I _know_ anyone named Kirney Slane?_

He knew a number of people on Corellia, of course.  He'd grown up there.  But he hadn't been back in many years.

And he was fairly certain the name was foreign to him.

He shrugged, and commanded the console to play the message.

"Hello, Myn."

Myn froze.  He heard the voice before the face really registered on his consciousness.  He hadn't seen her in weeks, but she'd managed to send a single message to him during her time with Zsinj.  He'd heard her voice.  Hell, he heard it every night in the back of his mind before he fell asleep.  Even through the Corellian accent, it was unmistakable.

He quickly scrolled back, trying to find out when the message had been sent.

Yesterday.

Three days _after_ she'd died.

"I'm back on Corellia now, after a few years of knocking around the galaxy."

The woman in the holo was red-haired, not the dark hair he remembered her having.  It hung in a long braid down her right shoulder.  But she herself, the shape of her face, her mannerisms.  It was her.

_A few years?_  She'd died only a few days before.

His heart was pounding.  You could fake a holo transmission, of course.  The Wraiths had done it on a couple of occasions themselves.  But that didn't feel right.  Why fake a transmission to him from someone he had every reason to hate?  Why change her name?  Why go to all the trouble to go after him?  It wasn't like he was terribly important, or had access to particularly confidential information.  It wasn't as if his getting killed would be a major coup for the empire.

_It's her.  It has to be._

"I'll be here, at the address given in the message header, for a few weeks."

The voice sounded… different somehow.  There was something that he'd never heard in her voice.

Hope.

At the same time, there was a sadness on her face which showed that deep down, she didn't honestly expect to see him again.

"Contact me, visit me— do whatever you feel you have to.  I'll accept whatever you decide."

_I could say twelve words, and when I was done, the very least you would do is turn away and leave me alone forever._  Her voice from so long ago rang in his mind.  He knew now that she was right, at the time.  In fact she had greatly overestimated the number of words she would have to say.  Four would have been sufficient at the time: "I am Gara Petothel."  At the time, he would likely have attempted to strangle her with his bare hands.

Now that he knew who she was…

He had to see her.  He knew that.

He just didn't know what he would do when he did.

Myn was a little stiffer than usual, Wedge noticed, as he walked briskly into his office the next morning and stood at attention in front of his desk.

"Sir, I'd like to request two week's leave of absence."  He announced as soon as Wedge gestured for him to speak.

"Granted."

"Sir, I would like to take some time to…" He stopped, realizing that his request had been granted.  He'd put together a story as to why he needed to get away for a couple of weeks.  It was pure Hutt-shit, of course, but Myn had figured that it would go over far better than 'I'm going to meet someone who's wanted for high treason.'

"Is there anything more, lieutenant?"  Wedge looked up at him.

"Sir, no.  No, sir."  Myn struggled to gather what was left of his composure around him.

"Very well, dismissed."

Myn, looking somewhat confused spun around and marched towards the door.

"Oh, lieutenant?"

Myn stopped and turned to face his commanding officer, "Sir?"

"Landing on Corellia in your X-wing is bound to attract a little attention.  We have a few Headhunters we use for training.  You can requisition one of those."

"Yes, sir."  Myn nodded, stiffly.

 "Are you qualified to fly one?"

"I haven't since the academy, sir, but I'm sure I can pick it up again."

"I'm sure you can.  We're spread a little thin on missiles, so I can't give you any for a pleasure cruise."

"Understood, sir."

"So, if you run into a Star Destroyer, run.  But a Headhunter will get you through most minor skirmishes."

"Yes, sir."

"And be careful, lieutenant."

"Yes, sir."

"Dismissed."

Myn spun around and again stalked towards the door, allowing it to close behind him.

It wasn't until he had made it a good thirty meters down the hallway when he realized that he had never actually told his commanding officer where he was going.

As he sunk slowly into the astromech socket behind the bubble-canopied cockpit, Clink decided that he had a fondness (if that was the right word) for antiques.

The Z-95t, one of the most recent variants of the Z-95 Headhunter, was still, by his standards, a rather crude device.  Nothing compared to the T-65 X-wings that he'd clocked most of his time in.  But as he interfaced with the computer, he decided that the old, but robust, machine was a much more pleasant conversationalist than Myn's X-wing.  This machine was humbly aware of its obsolescence; whereas Myn's X-wing was thoroughly, and sometimes arrogantly, convinced of its superiority.  The upshot of that was that the Headhunter was willing to learn a few new tricks, while Myn's X-wing seemed bound and determined to remain static.

Scrolling quickly through the coding of the archaic computer, Clink could see at least a half-dozen small optimizations he could do which would rather dramatically increase the performance of the craft.  A few basic manipulations of the way the power was distributed, and a little tweaking here and there, and he could get some rather impressive performance out of this ship.  Nothing on the par with the X-wing, of course, but a definite improvement.

Keeping a starfighter flying, Clink had discovered, was an art of fractions.  Add a fraction here, take off a fraction there.  With a fine touch and a little patience, you could create a result which was far greater than the sum of its fractions.  In his time in Myn's X wing, Clink had found no fewer than ten thousand small adjustments he could make to vastly improve the fighter's performance, but the X-wing wouldn't hear of it.  After all, he was just an astromech, what did _he_ know of operating a starship?

Having a counterpart who was a little more… flexible was a joy.

After having modified the Headhunter's core programming, he set about plotting a course to Corellia.  Myn was busily loading the cargo compartment of the small fightercraft.  He wasn't wearing his flightsuit, or his uniform.  Instead he'd donned a light-colored leather vest, and had a blaster pistol strapped to his right thigh.  At a glance, he appeared to be your standard smuggler or bounty hunter.  One of the thousands of faceless individuals who passed through Corellia every day.  Clink watched, with some surprise, as he tucked his sniper rifle into the cargo compartment.  It didn't seem that it was a weapon Myn was likely to use extensively, but he appeared to want it with him; and he wanted it badly enough to take up a few kilograms of the Headhunter's rather limited cargo room.  Perhaps the pilot simply felt safer having it nearby.

He looked at the course the Headhunter's computer had suggested, and tweaked it a little bit.  It wouldn't speed up their transit much, but Clink prided himself on his attention to detail.

The throwback from the clone wars rocketed from the _Mon Remonda's hanger bay into the void of space.  He swung the fighter craft into a few aerobatic maneuvers, refamiliarizing himself with the controls.  The Headhunter seemed faster and more maneuverable than the one he remembered training in.  It was no X-wing, but it would do nicely.  He wasn't expecting much in the way of trouble anyway.  He was just going to visit an old…_

Well, what was she, really?  A friend?  A lover?  Both?

Neither?

He supposed he would find out.

He forced himself to relax as the vehicle catapulted itself into hyperspace.


	2. Business

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.  The short version is that I don't own any of this, and I'm not making money off of it, as much as I wish I could.  This is intended as a purely creative exercise.

Chapter 2:

The woman who had once called herself Lara Nostil stepped out of the tiny refresher, running a towel over her wet, tangled hair.  Tonin tweedled at her quietly, leaving her to guess at his message's content.

"Whatever it was you just said, I'll take care of it in a minute," she muttered groggily.  She hadn't been sleeping terribly well lately, and the shower she'd just taken did little to waken her.  Money was tight at the moment.  She'd managed to land a couple of transport jobs, but the cavernous space of the _Sentinel-class landing ship would be painfully devoid of cargo for the next little while._

That, in part, explained the Spartan existence she now enjoyed.  She lived in the tiny crew quarters of the drop ship.  Barely tall enough to stand in, and just barely wide enough to spread one's arms.  The bunk was little more than an alcove set into the wall, and was just barely long enough to fit her slender frame; and she wasn't tall, by any stretch of the imagination.  She couldn't help but wonder why a vehicle with such a vast cargo space had such cramped quarters.  Surely they could sacrifice a couple of cubic meters of cargo room to make the crew more comfortable.

It was definitely on her list of modifications to this ship, once she could afford it.  For now, keeping the ship moored here was draining her finances.  In three weeks, she would either have a steady stream of clients, or she would have to move on.  The ship had been loaded with various miscellaneous Imperial knickknacks, a dozen or so speeder bikes, enough blaster rifles to occupy a small planet (she'd kept a few of those for her own use).  She'd sold most of them off to get the necessary overhead to start up her business.  Not to mention to cement Kirney Slane's identity.  Plant enough information in just the right places that anybody doing a background check would believe her.  Lara Nostil had been a lie that became truth.  Perhaps Kirney Slane would be equally lucky.

Tonin stood silently in the corner, taking up some of the desperately-needed floor space of the tiny room, watching her silently as she dressed.

_Horny little bastard,_ she thought to herself, jokingly.  Truth be known, she wanted him there.  She felt more… comfortable when he was with her.  He made her feel safe, somehow.

Of course, it would have been nice if he'd been a little more judgmental a few days back when, in a moment of weakness, she'd recorded and sent a message to Myn Donos.  It would have been nice to have him try to talk her out of it.  Instead, the little droid had stood idly by to let her record a message that she had absolutely no reason to believe would be answered; without so much as twittering in protest.

After all, the last time she'd seen him, he'd tried to blow her out of the sky, and had been willing to shoot _through his commanding officer to do it.  She wasn't exactly optimistic that his opinion of her had improved since then._

Not that she hadn't meant every word of it, but Myn really didn't need her screwing his life up.

Again.

No, the odds were that Myn had watched it once, deleted it, and had never looked at it again.

In the meantime, keeping herself busy did wonders for keeping her from thinking about it.

Keeping her mind occupied stopped it from thinking about the last time she'd seen him.

She had a meeting with a client this morning.  He'd insisted on meeting her at one of the local tapcafs a short distance from the spaceport.  She'd done a background check on him, and he seemed to be on the level.

_Still, never hurts to be cautious._  She strapped a heavy blaster pistol to her left thigh.  The weapon didn't have much in the way of range.  She could probably launch a spitball farther than this thing could shoot.  But it packed a punch which rivaled most blaster rifles.

She'd never been a particularly good shot.  Not as good as…

She stopped herself.  It did her no good to dwell on what couldn't be.

Myn was an exceptional sniper.  But even at close range, he was deadly.  With a good, accurate pistol…

She stopped herself again.  She was dwelling, she realized.

At any rate, at the range this pistol had, aim didn't really matter.  Your average trained bantha could bull's-eye a target at this thing's maximum range.

She sat quietly and completed her preparations.

If Tonin had a brow, it would have been furrowed at that moment.  He'd spent most of his functional existence working alongside humans, but if there was one thing of which he was certain, it was that he would never understand them.

He lacked arms, but even if he didn't, he doubted that having one of them tied behind his back would have affected his ability to calculate a hyperspace jump in the least.  He could perform complex mathematics in microseconds.  He could perform emergency repairs on, arguably, the most advanced fighter craft in existence, and had a deep understanding of every component on the spacecraft.

With one exception: the human pilot.

Tonin lacked emotions as human beings or other sentient creatures understand them, but the unpleasant electrical impulses the coursed through his circuitry would best be described as concern.  In the last seventy-two standard hours, he'd witnessed Kirney crying eleven times, for a total time of 28.176 standard minutes.  Yet, in spite of witnessing the process those eleven times, he had proven completely unable to predict it.  He suspected that her recent angst was in some way related to a message he'd recorded and sent for her 79.466 hours ago.  However, he'd seen her send dozens of holocom messages without crying over them.  He could not grasp why this one would be any different.

He pondered his own experiences over the past weeks, in an attempt to understand her position better.  He'd worked for a long time with Lara's X-wing.  The two had had a close working relationship.  Perhaps even a reasonable analog of human friendship.  Tonin had certainly felt his loss, but it was difficult for him to describe what he felt as sadness.  And, in a way, the X-wing had been replaced in his life.  The _Sentinel_ (which Kirney had dubbed _Lara's Hope, although its transponder identified it as the__ Wraith) was a pleasant enough machine to work with.  It allowed him to do most of the hyperspace calculations, something he excelled at, and to a great degree, he found working with the much larger machine very rewarding._

So, why could Kirney not find a replacement?

This was something he would have to contemplate.

The tapcaf was small and crowded, but it was also the kind of place that nobody would be likely to notice or care if one of the patrons drew a blaster and shot another; provided the deceased patron had paid for his drink first.  Corellian law enforcement tended to turn a blind eye to places like this.

Kirney had arrived early, and had taken a table, alone.

Her client was a Verpine who wanted himself, his family, and his work transported to Coruscant, and he wanted it done quietly.  That suited Kirney just fine.  She wasn't exactly interested in making a lot of noise on the capital planet of the regime that had her labeled as a traitor.  But she was fairly certain she could slip in and out quietly enough not to arouse any attention.  The planet had, literally, millions of craft flying into and out of its atmosphere.  One more freighter, even one as big as _Lara's Hope, would hardly be a blip on their sensors._

She could practically be there and back within two standard days; and he was willing to pay handsomely for it.

She spotted him the instant he walked into the caf.  There weren't many Verpine on Corellia, which, in and of itself, made him stand out in a crowd.  Plus, he looked nervous.  She hadn't seen a whole lot of nervous people walking in.  His insectile features, radiated worry, such that they could through his tough exoskeleton.

He slid into the chair in front of her and looked at her across the table.

She drew her pistol and pointed it directly at the Verpine's chest.  "Blaster on the table now."  The Verpine's exoskeleton provided quite a bit of protection against blaster bolts, but not enough to block this pistol at point-blank range.

"How do I know you won't shoot me as soon as I hand it over?"

"'Cause you're not going to hand it over.  We're both going to put our weapons down on the table, then our hands go under the table, and don't come back up, do you understand?"

The Verpine nodded.  He reached down, bringing a blaster pistol not unlike her own up above the table, holding it by its trigger guard.  He deposited it on the table top as she did the same.  Then he brought his hands to his lap, watching hers intently as they did the same.

"Ten thousand," she said, blankly, "Half now, half on arrival."

He stared at her, "there are a dozen courriers who would take me that far for half that much."

"But none who'll do it no questions asked."  She told him, "You said you wanted this done quietly."

"Seven-five?"

"Nine."

"Eight?"

"Eighty-seven, fifty."

"Done."

"Half now, half upon arrival."  She told him.  He nodded, "You pay gas."  He nodded again.  She tried not to let the relief show on her face.  That sum alone would allow her to cover mooring for an additional month, maybe even find herself a decent place to live.

"Do we have a deal?"

"Yes," she nodded, "but just so that we understand each other, if you are so much as remotely involved with any illegal activity, I jettison you, your equipment and your family, regardless of where we happen to be when I find out, clear?"

"As transparisteel."

"Alright, hand over the forty-three, seventy-five, and we'll get on our way."

He nodded, and reached into his pocket.  He peeled off a few bills and handed them across the table to her.  She casually placed one hand on her blaster pistol atop the table as a not-too-subtle warning not to try anything.  "That should cover gas as well," he informed her.

She counted it.  He was right: it would cover gas and then some.  He must really be desperate.  She looked at the size of the roll of cash he stuffed back in his pocket, "You came prepared to pay ten thousand," she accused him.

He shrugged, a rather interesting gesture with his insectile features, "Why pay ten thousand when you were willing to settle for eighty-seven fifty?"

She glared at him, "I see your point, I suppose."

"Shall we be off, then?"  He asked her.

"Before we go, is there anything you want to tell me?"  She glanced over his shoulder, and planted her feet on either side of the chair she was seated on.

"No, why?"

"'Cause you're about to get jettisoned."  She propelled herself upwards and across the table, catching him across the chest in a high tackle, praying silently that anyone behind her would have the brains to hit the deck.  The duo hit the floor hard, and blaster rifle bolts tore through the space they had both occupied only moments ago.

She counted four, human, armed with what appeared to be stormtrooper rifles, but they had the advantage of not caring who got killed in the crossfire.  Everything about them, their clothes, the way they moved, screamed _gangster.  Somehow, she'd stumbled into the middle of a hit._

Or maybe she was the target, she wasn't sure.  She reached for her pistol before she realized that it was still on top of the table they were now under, and there was no way she could grab it before she had at least four blaster bolts in her.  She was fast, but not that fast.  Instead, she kicked up at the bottom of the table, flipping it onto its side, and creating a barrier between them and the assassins.  It would absorb at least a few shots.

"Now if you'd let me keep my gun then maybe…"  He stopped when he saw a blaster rifle taped to the bottom of the table, "Oh."  Then, in his mind, he reconstructed the way the table had been standing, and came to the realization that the rifle had been pointing right at his navel when he'd been seated, "_Hey!_"

"Later," she muttered, ripping the rifle free of the bottom of the table.  She took a quick glance around.  Everybody was on the ground or under a table.  As far as she could tell, nobody was hurt.

Now she would see if she could keep it that way.

For a brief instant, she looked at the diminutive Verpine and contemplated shooting him before she went to work on her attackers.  _No, she shook her head, angry at herself, _that's Gara talking_.  For the moment, the little insect hadn't done anything to harm her directly._

But if she found out that he had anything to do with this…

She popped up, taking aim at the positions the gunmen had occupied moments ago, but they were no longer there.  She ducked back behind the table as a swath of blaster bolts flew at her.

The bastards had taken cover behind the cowering patrons.

Dammit.

A year ago, she would not have given a second thought to shooting through those patrons to get these gunmen.  Now…

Dammit.

"I'm asking you this once," she told the Verpine, "did you have anything to do with this?"

"No!"  He insisted, then clarified: "A little."

"If we get out of this, you're going to explain that, _then_ I'll decide whether to blow your head off."

"Sounds fair."

She popped up again, firing a quick burst over the patron's heads.  _C'mon, she chided them silently, __give me something to shoot off._

One of the attackers did, he rose to a low crouch, his rifle held up to his eye as he carefully took aim at the redhead.

She loosed another burst before he could squeeze the trigger, catching him in the center of his chest, driving him backwards.  _Too slow_, she thought at him as angrily as she could.  Peripherally, she saw one of the others standing, bringing his rifle to bear.  She couldn't swing hers at him fast enough.  Not before she fired, and by the time she managed to duck behind the table again, he would have shot her three times.

She wasn't going to make it out of this.

It seemed to take an eternity for the man to squeeze the trigger, but she knew it couldn't be more than the fraction of a second it took her to swing her own rifle at him.  Her hands seemed to be moving impossibly slowly.  Even as the sights of her rifle panned across the room, she knew it wasn't fast enough.

_Myn__, for whatever it's worth, I'm sorry._

The sound of a blaster erupting in the enclosed space was deafening.


	3. Found

Disclaimer: They're not mine, and I'm not making any money off of this, as much as I wish that they were and I was.  They're the creation of LucasArts, Aaron Allston and Michael A. Stackpole.  I'm just borrowing 'em for a little while to vent a little creative energy.

Chapter 3:

Kirney heard the unmistakable sound of a blaster firing, and some part of her psyche that didn't want to witness her own death forced her eyes to close, and steeled her body for the inevitable impact.  She heard the unmistakable sound of a body falling heavily to the floor.  It took her a moment to realize that the body was not hers.

She ducked behind the table as another hail of blaster fire, this time from the only two remaining rifles, dug deep into the table's surface.  As the roar of blaster fire died down, she heard another single blaster shot from somewhere nearby, followed again by the unmistakable _thud_ of a body falling limply to the ground.

_What in the name of the force is going on?_

"It seems we have a friend with us."  The Verpine sounded amused.

Whoever it was had impressive aim.  He'd just downed two humans (who were undoubtedly wearing armor of some description) with a single shot each.  It had taken her a burst of blaster fire, five or six individual blaster bolts, to down one.

The only person she knew personally who was capable of something like that was…

_Myn__?_

She wiped that thought from her mind.  It couldn't be him, it simply couldn't.  She popped her head above the edge of the table again, and waited for the last gunner to take the bait.  He did, opening fire at their position, but his aim was off, and the shots landed low, impacting the table.  She'd gambled that he wouldn't be able to hit a small target such as her head, while he would have to present a much larger one to fire.  Another quick burst of blaster fire tore through his chest, creating a hole the size of a small Ewok in the space his heart and lungs would once have occupied.  As he fell to the ground, she stood carefully, keeping her rifle trained on the crowd just in case someone jumped up to attack.  As she came around the table, she crouched down quickly to recover her pistol, and return it to its holster on her leg.

She approached the bodies.  It was trivial to tell the ones she'd taken down, they had been shot in an almost haphazard manner.  Blaster bolts had impacted their chests, and were spread over their respective torsos.  The other two, on the other hand, were works of art.  They'd been shot from the side in such a way that the blaster bolt slammed through the back of the neck where the spinal column connected with the base of the skull, liquefying the brain stem.  This prevented the dying man from reflexively squeezing the trigger, potentially killing dozens, as he went down.

_Standard sniper shot, _she realized.  _Myn__?_

_It's not Myn,_ a rebellious voice in the back of her mind spoke up, _you__ just want__ it to be him._

She grabbed the lithe Verpine by the arm and, quite literally, dragged him outside.  At a slow run, they made their way down the street, finally ducking into an alleyway where nobody would pay much attention to them.

"Okay, speak."

"I don't work for them, honest.  I don't work with them either."  The Verpine insisted, "but they _do want me dead, which is why I have to leave the planet."_

"Even career criminals don't try to kill you for no reason.  That was a hit squad back there, not a random shoot-up-the-tapcaf operation.  Why do they want _you dead?"  She demanded._

"They probably saw me and my wife enter the tapcaf."

"You're lying.  You entered alone."  She pressed the barrel of the blaster rifle under the Verpine's chin.

"Yes.  She entered an hour before I came.  They probably saw her come in and knew I'd be along soon."

"You're still lying."  She told him, "You were the only Verpine in the room."

"I never said my wife was Verpine."  The tiny creature cocked his head at her.

That was true, she realized, he hadn't.  "What is she?"

"Human."  The Verpine told her, shrugging.

"What was she doing there?"

"If you threatened me, she would have shot you."

"I _did_ threaten you."  She told him, "You'll recall one of the first things I did was point a gun at you."

He shrugged, "I knew you'd probably do that, and so did she."

She frowned, this Verpine had a way of making her feel really predictable.  She didn't like feeling predictable.  "You said you have children."  She actually didn't know for sure whether a human and a Verpine could reproduce or not, but looking at the shape of the tiny creature's body, the mechanics of it alone were mind-boggling, and part of her mind was pretty certain that Verpine reproduction involved laying eggs in some way.

He nodded, "Six of them; two Verpines, two humans, a Givin and a Wookie."  He looked sad for a moment, "the war with the empire left a lot of orphans on both sides."

"That still doesn't explain why they want you dead."  She told him.

"My wife's name is Minos Corva."  He told her.

"Corva, as in Logos Corva?"

He nodded, "his daughter."

The final piece slid into place.  Logos Corva had been a small-time gangster at Nar Shadda for a few years before his operation spread galactically.  He had his hand in a little bit of everything; smuggling, spice trading, piracy, black market weapons sales, wetwork.  He wasn't a major player by any stretch of the imagination, but he definitely had his share of clout in the galactic underground.  There were rumors of him having made an alliance with one of the Imperial warlords.****

Corva was legendary for exactly two things: his ruthlessness with his enemies, and his irrational bigotry towards non-human races.

And it was likely that he wasn't too happy with his daughter marrying a Verpine.

"Sithspit."  Kirney whispered under her breath.  She hadn't heard that Corva's daughter was married.  Probably because Corva wanted to keep it secret long enough to track them down and kill the husband.

"So now, you see why I need to get off this planet, and fast."

"Well, here's the thing: I told you that if you were even remotely involved with anything illegal, I'd cut you loose."

"I haven't broken any laws."  The Verpine insisted.

"But you're involved with people who do."  _This is attention I really don't need,_ she stopped herself from adding.  Having a gangster tailing them made it that much less likely that she could slip in and out of Coruscant without anybody noticing.

"Falling in love with the wrong woman is not a crime."

"It's just not particularly smart."  Kirney muttered, bitterly.

"What does that have to do with it?"  He demanded, harshly.  His tone softened, "haven't you ever been in love with someone?  Haven't you ever known that it was wrong and stupid for you to feel that way, but been completely powerless to stop it?"

Kirney glared at him for a long time, finally after what seemed like an eternity, she spoke: "What's your name?"

"My name?"

"We have a long way to go, and I can't be calling you 'hey you' all the time."  She lowered the rifle from his chin.

The Verpine let out a long breath as a look of enormous relief washed over him, "call me Gus.  Everybody else does."

"Alright, Gus.  You've got yourself a ship."

Gus directed her to his residence.  His wife was already there waiting, probably because Kirney and Gus had taken a number of detours to make sure they weren't being followed, and it looked as though they'd loaded his life's work (not to mention their six adopted children) into a small cargo speeder.  The speeder would easily fit into the cargo hold of the _Hope_, which would save them, potentially, hours worth of unloading its contents.

"Thanks for the bail-out back there," Kirney said as she shook hands with Gus' unorthodox wife, "that was some pretty amazing shooting."

She stood a few centimeters shorter than Kirney, with long black hair which extended in a braid down to her waist.  

"Thanks," Minos replied, "I've been firing blasters since I was six, and they weren't expecting me."  She smiled, "it was pretty easy."

Kirney felt her heart sink into the soles of her feet.  Somewhere, deep in the recesses of her mind where she wouldn't even admit it to herself, where no Jedi could dig it out, she'd been hoping that Minos would deny that she was the mystery gunman.  She hoped she'd say that she didn't know who it was, but she saw a man with blond hair holster a blaster and leave the tapcaf.

_It wasn't Myn,_ she realized, trying to keep the hurt from showing on her face.

"Are you okay?"  Minos asked, concern in her voice.

"I am, I just was… hoping it was someone else."

Minos was a kind woman, in spite of her parentage.  But Kirney couldn't repress the spark of jealousy burning in her.  What right did _they have to have something she had been denied?  She still didn't know for sure whether or not she had loved Myn, but the universe had denied her the opportunity even to find out._

It just wasn't fair, dammit.

She'd keyed her comlink to the _Hope's frequency, "Kolot, start spinning up the engines and begin preflight, we'll be there within fifteen minutes."_

"Kolot?"

"Co-pilot," she explained, "You'll like him, he's a lot like you in an annoying sort of way."

"Do I need to remind you that I'm paying your bills?"  Gus frowned at her, "You could try a little common courtesy."

"Okay, find another transport."

"Point." He conceded.  After the display in the tapcaf, it seemed unlikely that anybody would offer them passage.  Most transport pilots could be described as crazy, but none of them could be described as stupid.

"Everybody here?  Let's go."  She ordered.  Minos was at the controls, and she seemed to be quite a competent pilot.  Lara would have preferred to take the controls herself, but if she had to shoot something, it probably wasn't the best place to be.  "Take a left here," she ordered her.  Minos guided the vessel expertly through the narrow streets.

"Um?  We have a problem." Minos piped up from the front of the speeder.

"What is it?"  Kirney asked, pointlessly.  As she looked through the front windshield, she saw six identical speeder bikes, blocking the road in front of them.  Mounted on each one was a human armed with rifles identical to those that had been firing at them back in the tapcaf.

"Sithspit," She muttered under her breath, "ram them."

"What?"

"Give it as much speed as you can, _ram them." She ordered._

"Yes, ma'am."  Minos put as much power as she possibly could through the engines, and drove at the middle two of the six speeder bikes.

All six of the ambushers opened fire, and the windscreen disintegrated in front of Minos' face.

Minos ducked her head underneath the dash.  She couldn't see where she was going, but she didn't really need to to keep this oversized brick on a straight course.

The collision of upwards of three metric tonnes traveling at over seventy kilometers per Coruscant hour with two stationary speeder bikes was analogous to dropping an anvil on a small rodent.  The two riders had the intelligence to get out of the way before the speeder hit them, but the bikes could not be saved, and erupted into a pair of twin fireballs as the speeder ploughed through them.  The wookie child roared in what Kirney interpreted as a victorious tone.  The Givin child, with its mournful, sad looking eyes seemed to look upon the chase they were now in as an interesting intellectual exercise.

"Where's your ship?" Gus asked.

"We can't go to my ship, not yet.  We have to lose them first."  Through the back windows, she could see the bikes turning around to give chase.

"Can we outrun them?"  That was Minos.

Kirney shook her head.  "Not a snowball's chance on Nkllon."

"So, what do we do?"

"We lose 'em."  Kirney looked down at the blaster rifle she still held in her hands.  It had, she guessed, about 80 shots remaining, and she had the advantage that she wouldn't be trying to shoot and drive at the same time.

She crawled over the six kids into the cargo compartment in the back.  It was cramped, and full of boxes and equipment, but there was still room to move around in it, and the boxes provided good cover.

_Yes, this will do nicely,_ she thought to herself.  She made her way to the back of the compartment, and pressed a small green button with her thumb.  The large rear door slid upwards, revealing four speeder bikes moving in formation just behind their speeder.  The bikes themselves were armed, she could now see, with some sort of light blaster cannon.  They could mow down just about any soft target easily, but they were also notoriously inaccurate.  The pilots, if they were smart, would be trying to disable their vehicle, not to necessarily hit anyone inside.

Besides which, they probably wanted Minos alive.

She ducked behind a metal crate, knowing that it would absorb just about anything those blaster cannons could throw at her.  Provided none of them were lucky to take her head off, she should be safe there.

She, on the other hand, didn't have to worry about not running into anything, as long as Minos did her job well enough, so she could concentrate on shooting their pursuers.

She opened fire at the nearest, sending a wave of blaster fire at the unprotected driver.  Of the six bolts she fired, exactly one hit in his left shoulder, forcing him to veer to the left, slamming with titanic force into an unyielding wall.

_That was the easy one_, she realized, _the next three, I'm going to have to work for._

The three remaining bikers made that abundantly clear when they opened fire on the inside of the cargo compartment, forcing her to duck into as tight a space as she could to avoid getting hit.  The bolts didn't have enough penetration to get into the passenger compartment.

_Okay, I think they might be angry_.  She fired another burst at them, not expecting to hit anything, more to rub their faces in the fact that she was still there.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder.

She whipped around, bringing the rifle around to aim at the intruder.

"Sithspit, Gus.  What are you _doing?"_

"I thought you could use a little help."  He shrugged.  She realized that he held a small blaster carbine in his hands.

"Always.  Get yourself behind something on the other side of the cargo hold, and we'll see what we can do."  She paused, "And just so you know, getting yourself killed isn't grounds for reneging on payment."

"Understood."

Gus quickly left her side and made his way to the opposite side of the small cargo compartment, and took position behind what looked like a computer console of some description.

The three remaining bikes had taken up a triangle formation: one leading, the other two behind him to either side.  They'd open fire every time she or Gus popped up to shoot, then when they crouched down, they'd proceed to take the speeder apart piece by piece.

The whole compartment lurched, and with a screeching of metal, Kirney was flung free of her cover to slam, sprawled in the open.  One of the bikes had just scored a lucky shot on one of the repulsorlift generators.  The speeder had three more, and already she could feel the vessel righting itself as Minos played with the repulsor field to keep it steady, but the added power to the repulsors would slow them down by almost a quarter.

That was not her biggest worry.

The fact that she was lying prone without any shelter when all three bikes were about to open fire was.

She jumped up and ran towards her crate, it was only when she dove behind it that she realized that she'd left her rifle behind.  She silently commended herself for remembering to pick up her blaster pistol back at the tapcaf.

This pistol held fifty shots, so she'd have to use them carefully.  She had no spare power packs.

She took careful aim at the lead biker and fired, cursing as she saw her shot miss high.

_Wait a second, high?_

It wasn't that the shot had gone high, it was that the driver had sunk down.

That realization came a split second before the bike's skids caught on the rough ground, sending the bike rolling.  The driver was flung free, and sailed through the air, slamming at over ninety kilometers per Coruscant hour into the ground.  The newly-vacated bike twisted sideways, blocking the paths of the two remaining bikers who could not react in time to avoid a collision, they slammed headlong into the downed bike, catapulting themselves free of their seats to land in fairly close proximity to their fallen comrade.

"Vader's bones," Gus whispered from his hiding spot, "Damn fine shot."

"It wasn't me," Kirney told him, not entirely believing what she'd seen herself.

"I saw you," Gus insisted, "you hit his repulsor housing."

"It wasn't me.  I was aiming at his head."

"Well, you missed."  Gus told her, "Worked out for the best, I think."

"No, I missed high."

"What?"

"I shot over his head as his repulsorlift gave out.  Someone else shot it out."

"Well, it wasn't me."

"Minos, stop."  Kirney turned to the young woman at the controls.

"What?"

"Stop, _now._"

Kirney didn't even wait for the speeder to stop before jumping out.  She only waited until it was moving slowly enough that she could do so without getting hurt.

Barely.

She stood in the middle of the street, scanning the building tops.  This time it _had to be him.  Maybe a handful of people in the galaxy could have made that shot, and he was one of them._

_C'mon, Myn, show yourself._

"Kirney," Gus walked up behind her, "What are we doing here?"

"I'm looking for someone."  Her eyes scanned the balconies.  He had to be out there somewhere.  _Where are you?_

The Verpine looked up at the building tops, following her gaze.  "Who?"

"Me."

Both human and Verpine spun around at the new voice, dropping into a crouch and taking aim at the new arrival.

"Sorry I'm late."

She brought the blaster down from its raised position and slipped it back into its holster.

She stood, looking at the new arrival quizically, trying to read his expressions, and found, for once, she couldn't.

"Hi, Myn."  She said, quietly.


	4. Escape

Disclaimer:  Not mine, as much as I wish I could claim otherwise.  

Sorry for not updating sooner.  I've been a little frantic lately.

Chapter 4:

"Myn."

"Lara."

"Hi."

"Hi."

"Um, not to break up this heartwarming reunion, but sooner or later, Corva's men are going to realize that we're still not dead, and come here to remedy that situation."  Gus piped up.  He received a glare from both of the pilots standing before him.  He was fairly certain he'd never seen this man before, but he clearly had some kind of a history with the transport pilot he'd hired.  Gus would have preferred not to have a pilot carrying that much baggage with her, but since the baggage had probably just saved their lives, he got the benefit of doubt.  The young man had what looked to be a sniper rifle strapped across his back, which, if he was any good with it, he could have used to make the shot that had downed their pursuers.  It would have been one heck of a shot, though, the Verpine realized.  Long range, firing at a target about seven centimeters squared, moving at over one hundred and sixty kilometers per Coruscant hour.  Off the top of his head, he could think of only six people who could have made a shot like that in the whole galaxy.  And two of them worked for Corva.

"So, what are you doing here?"  Kirney asked as the trio walked towards the speeder.

"You invited me."  Myn shrugged.

"I know, but," Kirney paused, "I wasn't actually expecting you to show up."

"I can leave if it makes you…"

"_No!_" Kirney cut him off, "I mean, I could use your help on this one."

Myn didn't respond, but nodded stoically.

The three climbed into the speeder and Minos started it moving.  Gus took it as his cue to leave the two alone in the cargo compartment.

"How did you find me?"  Kirney piped up again.

"You gave me your address."

"No, I mean, how did you find me _here?"_

He shrugged.  "I arrived at your ship just as you left this morning.  Tonin was nice enough to give me the particulars about your client.  Who he was, where he lived, where he was meeting you, and so on."  He grinned a little, "I followed you to the tapcaf, but stayed outside.  I saw the four would-be assassins enter, heard the gunfire, and saw you and the Verpine run out.  It didn't take much for me to figure that they'd try to hit you somewhere between his house and your ship, and it was even easier to find them.  They weren't very subtle about it."

"So you waited until now to help?"  She frowned, "I really could've used your help back at the caf."

"You made it out, didn't you?"

"How'd you know what route I'd take?"  She asked.

"I thought you'd take the most direct one from your client's house to your ship.  You had to figure that whoever ambushed you in the caf would have blocked off just about every route from there; which, by the way, they had; so the most direct route was the one with the fewest question marks."  Myn smiled gently, "Or at least, that was my reasoning."

"Mine, too."  Kirney responded, quietly.

"I moved over the rooftops; an easy way of going directly from one place to another without being spotted."

"Always the sniper," Kirney half-smiled, "good shot, by the way."

Kirney was silent for a long time before she spoke again, "Myn, what are you doing here?"

"I told you, you invited me."

"No, I mean…"

"I know what you mean," he looked straight into her eyes, "I don't know, Lara."  He paused, "there are… some things I need to work out."

_This is not the Myn I used to know_, Kirney thought to herself.  The Myn of her past life would have wiped all expression off of his face, bottled every emotion, shown nothing but a blank visage which she had only just learned to read before she'd… left.  It took her a moment to realize why she could not read the cast on his face now.  He wasn't attempting to hide it; he simply did not know how he felt.  There was a softness to his countenance, a gentleness in his voice which she'd never heard before.

He'd changed.

"I won't turn you in, if that's what you're worried about."  He continued.

She wasn't particularly worried about that, but she let him continue uninterrupted.

"I'll help you here," he told her, "after that…"  He left the thought unfinished.

She was glad he did.  She didn't want to think about what would happen afterwards.  For now, she just wanted him here.

Minos pulled the speeder into the hanger, and slid it expertly into the _Hope_'s vast cargo bay.  The restraint field installed in the large interior, detecting the entry of a new vehicle, automatically activated itself, preventing the three-ton vehicle from shifting in flight.

"Okay, everybody out."  Kirney stepped down to the _Hope's cold, metal floor, and watched as the entry ramp slowly lifted to seal the cargo bay, "I don't have much in the way of living amenities, but what we have is yours."_

Gus nodded.  He turned and watched as his six children stepped out of the speeder, and looked in wonderment at the cavernous interior of the _Sentinel_ drop ship.  "Thank you," he told her simply.

"Thank me when you're safe."  She yelled over her shoulder, as she sprinted across the cargo bay, towards the flight deck where she knew she would find Kolot preparing the craft for liftoff.  She was only distantly aware that Myn was no more than a couple of meters behind her.

Tonin tweedled excitedly as she burst onto the flight deck at a flat run.  She guessed that he was saying something akin to "look who's here," as she realized a moment later that Clink stood silently next to him.  Both were interfacing with the ship's computer.  She guessed that they were calculating a jump to Coruscant.

Astromechs, especially those of the R2 series, are generally fairly solitary types.  As a rule they generally prefer to work alone.  As far as she could tell, Tonin and Clink seemed to be working rather amicably together.  Although she could not understand any of their bleepings at each other, they didn't have the angry tone that Tonin's had when he was admonishing her for something.  And so far, neither astromech had drawn its arc welder.  She took that to be a good sign.

"Kolot, we have maybe eleven standard minutes before we get blockaded in, tell me you're ready to lift off."  She slipped smoothly into the pilot's seat next to the small Ewok, and buckled herself in.

"You do realize that whole Kettch thing was a joke, right?"  Myn's voice was slightly strained as he strapped himself into one of the jumpseats tucked in behind the pilot's seat.

The Ewok, however, seemed to be quite comfortable as he quite expertly prepared the shuttle for liftoff.  The prosthetic extensions protruding from each of his four stubby limbs danced smoothly over the dials and controls as the quiet whine of the engines rose to a high-pitched crescendo.  Having met Piggy, Myn was willing to accept that the little guy _could_ fly.  Stranger things had certainly happened.

But he couldn't for the life of him figure out how the little guy could see over the instrument panel.

"Okay, here we go," Kirney muttered to herself.

The oversized landing craft lifted shakily off of the ground and clawed hungrily for space.  The _Sentinel was designed for a rather rapid ascent and descent for a craft that size.  Designed to drop through enemy air cover to unload its cargo, then rocket up just as fast to load up again without being shot down.  Myn had always found it to move unnaturally fast in the ascent and descent configurations.  Disproportionately fast, at any rate, when compared to its speed in space.  In space, they moved at a speed which made them near-ideal for target practice._

"We've got uglies."  Kirney announced as the blue sky darkened to a deep purple, then black.

"How many?"

"I count six, no, eight."  She scanned the sensors, "can you handle a ship's guns?"

"Pretty well."

"Good, see if you can buy me about forty seconds.  Tonin, Clink, whatever you can get out of the engines would be greatly appreciated."  Kirney's voice was steady, but hard.

The two astromechs bleeped enthusiastically at her, as they went about convincing he ship's computer to play with the power settings.

Myn wasn't intimately familiar with the exact configuration of a _Sentinel_ landing craft, but he seemed to recall there being three gun emplacements.  One in the rear, two in the front.  He ran in the general direction of the rear turret, hoping that the internal configuration of the craft was as simple as a landing craft should be.

Darting around a corner, he slammed facefirst into Gus, who was coming up to the flight deck.

He hit the metal floor in an undignified sprawl, as the much smaller Verpine was flung against the wall of the narrow hallway.

"What's going on?"  Gus picked himself up of the ground.

"We're being attacked.  Eight fighters.  We need to buy some time."

"Can I help?  I can operate a turret."  Gus told him.

Myn looked at him, carefully.  Two guns certainly were better than one, and if Minos could operate a gun they'd have all three operational.

"No," he told him, simply.

"But…"

"Your family needs you more than we do."  Myn held up a hand, cutting him off.

The Verpine nodded, the expression on his face was one Myn interpreted as gratefulness, but he wasn't all that good at reading Verpine expressions.

Myn turned and ran for the gunner's seat in the rear.  The ship was already rocking as the improvised fighter craft strafed the large landing vehicle, stitching its shields with laser fire.  He slid into the gunner's seat, and slipped the headset over his ears, adjusting the microphone to sit just in front of his mouth.

"Talk to me, Lara," Myn spoke into the microphone.

"Forty seconds 'till we're clear of the Corellia's well, but Tonin and Clink may be able to shave a few off of that.  Shields are still holding steady, but that won't last too long if we can't talk them into keeping their distance."  Kirney was making no effort to keep the strain out of her voice.

He watched the fighter craft swing around and dart at the _Hope, bright green laser fire striking the powerful shields._

Uglies, appropriately named for their reputation as an eyesore, were not exactly an uncommon sight in the space surrounding Corellia.  Slapped together from parts from different fighters, a skilled mechanic could actually construct a fighter with reasonable performance for a relatively cheap price.  It was difficult to tell exactly what these craft were made of, but he they had a cockpit and body which looked like that of a Y-wing, and a pair of trapezoidal solar panels that seemed to come from a TIE interceptor.   Judging by their maneuvers, the looked to have performance which very nearly approached that of an X-wing.

He strongly doubted that they had hyperdrive, however, so if they could hold together long enough to make the jump, they were clear.

The craft circled around as a group and dove straight at the _Hope_ again.  He opened fire on fighters and watched as they scattered in all directions, breaking off their attack.  They were remarkably well organized.  They weren't as skilled as the Wraiths, the Rogues, or even Talon squadron, before they'd been obliterated, but the pilots had clearly been working together for some time.

"How much time?"  He demanded, firing a burst at the fighters as they circled around for another pass.  The burst was little more than a wild shot, intended to keep the craft from getting too close, rather than to actually hit them.  He swept his turret in a smooth arc, filling the space behind the _Sentinel_ with blaster fire.

"Twenty seconds."

"Oh, sithspit," Myn swore as he realized what the fighters were doing.  Each of the eight fighters had just drawn back to lie just outside the effective range of the blaster cannons he commanded, to line up wingtip to wingtip to face the much larger landing craft "See if you can speed that up at all."

"Why?"

As if to answer her question, the eight fighters fired simultaneously, but not their laser cannons, each fighter launched a pair of concussion missiles.

It was possible, of course, to shoot a concussion missile out of the sky before it hit you.  Myn himself had done it on a number of occasions.

Destroying sixteen of them, fired at relatively close range, was near to impossible.

But he didn't need to get all of them.  If he could sweep away ten of them, the remaining six would damage the craft, to be sure, but the _Hope would probably survive.  He concentrated his fire on the centermost missiles.  If he could make sure the impacts occurred over enough of a spread out area…_

"Give me time to impact every second."  Kirney's voice was steely over the headset.  She had something  planned.

"Ten seconds."

He swept the turret back and forth, tightly, and was relieved to see some of the missiles explode far short of their target.

"Nine… eight…"

He counted eleven missiles.  He wasn't going to be able to destroy enough of them.  Perhaps the crew compartment and the cargo bay would retain some integrity.

"Seven… six…"

He increased his firing rate, as he saw another pair of missiles detonate.  Nine left.

"Five… four…"

What he knew would be his final shots missed as the missiles spread out, programmed to loop back at the target striking it from all sides simultaneously.

"Three… two…"

He closed his eyes tightly, knowing full well that the fragile bubble in front of him would never survive the impact.  For a split second, he wondered what explosive decompression would feel like.

A single missile streaked over the canopy in front of him, so close that he was certain he could read the registry number on its casing.  Then, impossibly, he saw the eight missiles curve away from the craft, and arc back towards the eight fighters who had fired them.

_What's going on?_  He saw the telltale steadying of the missiles as they locked on to the fighters and designated them as their targets.  He knew now that the cockpits were filled with lights and klaxons which were designed to be impossible to ignore.  It seemed that the pilots had more pressing things to think about than large landing craft which was now making its getaway.

A few seconds later, _Lara's Hope_ blasted into hyperspace.

Myn stepped quietly into Kirney's room.  She sat heavily on the bunk, her head in her hands.

"Hoth?"  Myn asked, "Why Hoth?"

"Seemed like a safe place for the time being."  Kirney shrugged.

"How did you get those missiles to turn back?"  He demanded.

"I didn't.  Tonin did."

"How?"

"There have been rumors floating around that Corva was being bankrolled by an Imperial Warlord.  I suppose it made sense to me.  Especially considering that the gunmen in the caf and the bikers in the street were equipped with stormtrooper rifles and Imperial speeder bikes.  Now, to discourage treason, every missile in the Imperial navy is equipped with what amounts to a 'return to sender' command.  If a pilot fires a missile at an imperial vessel, they sent a signal over a coded frequency to that missile and it turns around and attacks the vessel that fired it.  Tonin picked up a lot of Imperial codes while we were on the _Iron Fist_, and that was one of 'em."

"There's something you're not telling me."

"No warlord would be dumb enough to tell another how to turn his missiles against him."  Lara told him, "So, the only code Tonin had was for Zsinj's missiles."

"Zsinj is bankrolling this guy?"

Kirney nodded, "it sure looks that way."

"So, what now?"

"Zsinj can wait.  I don't see any reason he would take a personal interest in this.  Now, we take Gus to Hoth."

"And then?"

She smiled, "Then, we let Corva find him."


	5. Abyss

Disclaimer:  Still not mine.  Although I will gladly wash Mr. Lucas' car if he'll sign the rights over to me.

Chapter 5:

"That… Isn't Coruscant," Gus pointed out as the starlines which surrounded the vehicle collapsed back into tiny pinpoints of light, a backdrop for a white, icy planet which hung lazily in the sky, like a pearl on black velvet.

"No, it's not."  Kirney shook her head.

"I don't know if I was unclear about this, but I told you that I wanted to be transported to Coruscant, right?"

"Yes."

"So, what are we doing… wherever we are?"

"Making a pit stop."

"Hey, I'm paying you to take me to Coruscant, not to go sightseeing across the galaxy."

Kirney sighed, annoyed, "If I take you to Coruscant now, you'll be dead before the week's out."

"What?"

"Do you really think that they didn't get a trace on our jump back there?"

"I guess I didn't really think about…"

"They got a trace on our jump, going in exactly the opposite direction of Coruscant.  So they'll have to follow us here or risk losing us.  That gives us the upper hand.  Here, at least, we can mount a good defense, and since nobody actually visits this ball of ice unless they're completely crazy, we'll know exactly when they're coming."

"Oh.  Well, in that case, carry on."  The diminutive Verpine nodded at her.

"Welcome to Hoth," she told him.

The four years of neglect since the battle of Hoth had done little damage to the remains of the old rebel outpost.  No, from her cursory examination, it looked as though just about all the damage that had been done had been done by the battle itself.  The blast doors had been blasted inwards, opening the giant hangar to the brutal, unforgiving cold.  But at least they would be sheltered from the winds which whipped over the worn surface of the planet.

The _Hope_ slid into the hangar bay, its repulsors humming as its wings folded to the vertical position.  Kirney expertly pushed the large craft into the bay and allowed it to settle to the ground, as far towards the back of the bay as she could.  It looked like the superstructure was largely intact.  As if the Imperial navy hadn't seen destroying the base as being worth the trouble.  She spun the craft around, pointing its large cannons at the gaping maw that had once been the hangar doors.  

Myn had been remarkably silent during the transit to Hoth.  He'd spent most of his time seated in the pilot's chair, watching the stars streak past the transparisteel canopy; watching the timer slowly count backwards to zero.  He hadn't spoken more than a couple of words to her since he'd come to her cabin to ask what she had planned; and with the _Sentinel's relatively slow hyperdrive, it had been nearly a six-hour transit._

That was a record, even for Myn.

She'd seen Myn withdraw into a shell from which no force in the universe could extricate him so many times during her time with the Wraiths, but this was different.  It wasn't as if he was cutting himself off from those around him, it seemed more as if he was taking a step back, taking a moment to look at the situation from an arm's length.  Like he was studying a work of art, or analyzing a preflight briefing.

His face was blank, but not because he had wiped all emotion off of it.  She could tell when he did that.  No, he seemed lost in thought.  As if he had more important things on his mind than putting some expression on his face.

_Gee, Kirney, got any more brilliant insights?_  Of course he had a lot on his mind.  A little over a month ago, he'd learned that someone he'd cared about had been almost directly responsible for the slaughter of eleven of his squadmates; and had tried to kill her for it.  A little over a week ago, he'd heard that she was killed, and justice had been served.

Last week, he'd received a message from her, telling her that she was alive and well on Corellia.

Yeah, he probably had quite a bit to think about.

But he was here, which to her thinking was a step in the right direction.

For the first time in weeks, she allowed herself to hope.

Never had Myn seen the biological differences between species so dramatically demonstrated.  Givin are largely considered among the most resilient humanoid species in the known universe.  Their planet had the most brutal tides in the Galaxy.  So brutal, in fact, that the atmosphere itself was pulled away from the planet's surface, often leaving half of the planet exposed to the unforgiving vacuum of space.  As such, they had evolved two separate mechanisms for survival.  Their tough exoskeletons could be sealed against a vacuum for short periods, and they had developed a mathematical acuity which was second to none.  They learned, through complex mathematical formalisms, to predict the tides of their planet with eerie accuracy.  They were so good, in fact, that Givin routinely mined the bottom of the ocean during low tide.  They were quite possibly the only mathocracy in the universe.  The most prominent members of their society were the mathematicians.  Whole religions on their planet were based upon mathematical formulae.

However, in spite of his ability to seal against a hard vacuum, the Givin child shivered uncontrollably in the cold.

The two verpine children, along with Gus had been heavily bundled up, and given special personal heating units, usually assigned to Imperial Snowtroopers.  Verpine, cold blooded creatures, depended upon their environment to regulate their body temperature.  They radiated no heat and therefore, a simple insulating jacket was completely useless to them.

The two human daughters and Minos fared a little better.  They all wore heavy jackets, and seemed a little chilled, but still relatively comfortable.

The Wookie seemed to fare best of all.  His (or was it a "her?"  Myn wasn't exactly sure) long body fur seemed to provide ample protection against the cold.  He (she?) wore no jacket, or, as far as Myn could tell, no clothing whatsoever.  Regardless, she (he?) seemed quite comfortable.  He (she) howled mournfully at his (her) mother, and somehow Myn doubted that he (she) was complaining about the cold.

Lara appeared at the top of the boarding ramp after everybody except for the two droids had disembarked.

"Okay, people," She started, "don't let yourselves think we're out of danger yet, because we're not."

She let that sink in for a moment.

"We managed to dodge a blaster bolt on Corellia, but I guarantee you that they got a fix on our jump vector and are on their way here as we speak.  Some of you may have noticed that this isn't Coruscant.  I brought you here because it's a relatively low-traffic area.  Nobody comes here.  So whoever comes after us has nowhere to hide."

"That gives us the advantage."

She paused for a moment, "I'll be honest: I don't like our chances.  We're against someone who has the backing of an Imperial warlord; and who, right now, wants to see each and every one of us dead or captured more than anything in the galaxy.  In three days, we'll either all be dead, or all be safe.  Either way, this is the best chance you have."

"Minos, Gus, take the portable heaters through that door there," she nodded at a narrow doorway at the end of the hangar, "you'll find a small room off to the right about four meters down.  Get your family in there and start up the heaters.  They should be enough to warm up the room.  Myn and I'll take the first watch, you can spell us off in eight hours.  I recommend you spend those eight hours getting some sleep."

It took them about twenty minutes to get the heating units operational in the small quarters.  Outside, just in front of the large landing craft, Myn had prepared a somewhat lower-technology heating unit.  He'd lit a fire.  It was a small fire, but it warmed up a small globe around them quite nicely.  Kirney could remember her mother from so many lifetimes ago telling her a story about the foolish rebel who had built a big fire, and had had to stand far away and had frozen to death, when the imperial stormtrooper had built a small fire and had stayed warm through the night.  She wasn't sure what brought that particular memory up in her mind at that moment.  The fire was warm, and had the added advantage that she would have to sit right next to him in order to be warmed by it, and keep an eye on the gaping maw of the hangar bay.

Myn sat cross-legged on the cold metal floor.  His sniper rifle (it seemed like he slept with the thing) lay an arm's length away.  His well-trained eyes swept over the distant hangar bay doors, looking for any telltale sign of movement.

"You know, I've got Clink and Tonin plugged in to the _Hope_'s sensors.  They'll detect anyone approaching long before they reach the hangar doors."

Myn nodded, "how long do you think we have?"

"For them," there was no need to specify who _they were, "to get a fix on our direction, gather a bunch of people with guns and no morals, get on a transport and come out here?"_

Myn nodded.

"Subtracting the six hours we spent in hyperspace, as few as eight hours, as many as twenty-four.  May I?"  She gestured at the empty space on the floor next to him.

"It's a free galaxy."

She sat down, laying the blaster rifle in her hand on the ground, and inched her way forward, ostensibly to get closer to the fire.

A long, uncomfortable silence followed; broken, surprisingly enough, by Myn.

"Why are we here?"

"I told you, this is where we have the best chance to fight them off."

"You weren't hired to fight their battles for them.  You were hired to transport them to Coruscant."

"I told you, they wouldn't stand a chance on Coruscant."  She frowned.  What was Myn getting at?

"So?"

"_So!?_"  She practically spat the word back at him, "I, for one, have issues with sending six innocent people to their deaths."

Myn turned to look at her, almost quizzically.

"What," she demanded, incensed, "you think it's stupid of me to protect six people I barely know!?"

Myn shook his head, a small smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.  "No, I don't," he replied, "but Gara would."

His words struck her dumb.  There, in a nutshell was the gaping maw between them.  Part of him would always see her as the woman who massacred his squad mates.  She had tried so hard to kill that person in every way she could think of, but deep down she knew that Gara was never far below the surface.

Kirney had always prided herself on her independence.  She liked the image of a "tough babe."  She liked being the cool, calm one who would always be the one left standing after the echoes of blaster fire died down.  She liked being able to take care of herself.

But right now, the one thing she wanted more than anything in the universe was to have Myn put his arms around her and tell her that everything would be alright.


	6. Betrayal

Disclaimer:  Nope, still not mine.

Chapter 6:

It was about three hours into Myn and Kirney's second watch when the two droids started twittering anxiously over the comlink Kirney kept clipped to her belt.

_Nineteen hours,_ Kirney thought to herself, _took them a little longer than I thought it would.  She knew it would take Corva's men no longer than twenty-four hours to catch up with them, but she'd been willing to bet that they'd be there in less than sixteen._

She wasn't entirely sure whether that was good or bad.  On one hand, it had given them time to prepare for their arrival.  On the other hand, it may mean that they'd managed to accumulate more troops.

Myn reached for his sniper rifle, the roof hanger had some large beams and supports in which he could sit, undetected.  The construction had favored lighter, smaller beams as opposed to solid, heavy supports.  The load-bearing members had plenty of room for a sniper to balance under them, with a open view of the hangar below.  From there, he could gun down just about anyone in the room without having to worry about return fire.  He would, hopefully, be outside their effective range.

They'd sent a rope up the side of the hangar.  It blended in fairly well with the wall behind it and was difficult to see if you didn't know it was there.  As long as these guys weren't _too bright, he could probably down three or four of them before they even knew he was there.  Minos and Gus, along with the children, had fortified themselves in a room where they would make their last stand; if it came to that.  If it _did_ come to that, the odds were that the battle was already lost._

"Any idea how soon they'll be here?"  That was the longest sentence Myn had spoken since their shift had started.

"Not long," Kirney shook her head, "This is the only actual structure on the planet.  It won't take them long to check to see if we're here."

Myn nodded, "you ready?"

"Yeah."  Kirney nodded back at him.

She picked up her blaster rifle and checked its charge.  She wasn't sure exactly how extreme cold affected Tibanna gas, but she'd seen snowtroopers firing these rifles in temperatures almost as cold as this.

Myn didn't seem worried about it, and he knew a lot more about how blasters worked than she did.  That was good enough for her.

"How do you think they'll play this?"  Myn asked.

Kirney shrugged, "they know we're here, they know we're waiting for them, and they probably lose a portion of their bonus if any of them get hurt or killed.  They're probably going to try to talk their way in first."  She paused for a moment, "they may even try a bribe.  They know we have no vested interest in keeping Gus and his family alive, other than the paycheck they represent.  They'll probably figure that if they can out-bid him without significantly affecting their profit margin; which, incidentally, they probably can; they may be able to grab all eight of them without firing a shot."

Myn smiled a little, this really was Lara's strength: her ability to out-think her opponent, to look at all the angles.

"You have any extra power packs for that?"  He nodded at Lara's rifle.

Kirney nodded, "Two, but if it comes down to a flat-out firefight, you're going to be needed far more than I am.  I plan on ducking behind something hard and waiting for the blaster fire to subside."

Myn knew that he couldn't take them all down quickly; but he didn't need to, really.  All he needed to do was make himself into a more serious threat than she was.  Make them concentrate on him rather than her.

Gunning down one or two of these mercenaries would accomplish that nicely, he figured.

He looked around the hangar.  Time had deposited a number of large boulders within its huge expanse, so Lara certainly wasn't without cover.  But there was nothing in the hangar which could protect them from him on his high perch.

"Okay, I'm going up to the crow's nest."  He looked up at the large, riveted support beams that crisscrossed the ceiling of the hangar.

"Myn," Kirney called to him as he turned to leave,

"Yes?"

"If you have to make a choice, I want you to favor killing them over protecting me."

"What?"

"Minos, Gus, they have a family, kids.  Me, I'm…"  She paused, finding the right word, "expendable."

"Lara…"

"Promise me, Myn."  Kirney's voice was quiet, but firm.

Myn looked at her for what seemed like an eternity, his dark eyes locked on hers, as if trying to see the inner workings of her mind.  Kirney looked away first, suddenly finding something absolutely fascinating about the section of metal floor about eight centimeters in front of her toes.  Finally Myn nodded.  She didn't actually see him nod his head, but she felt him understand.

"Now, I want you to make a promise for me."

"What's that?"

"That I won't have to keep mine."

He turned away before Kirney could respond.

Myn was glad he didn't have vertigo.

He sat in the support strut, where two thin beams came together to form a V-shape; leaving a small where he could sit comfortably.  Once he'd secured himself to the beam, he was perfectly safe, of course, but nearly fifty meters down on the hangar floor, Lara looked awfully tiny.  He unstrapped the sniper rifle from his back and gently swung its high magnification scope over the width of the hangar doors.

Lara was seated, cross-legged by the fire, facing the hangar doors with her rifle laid across her lap.  She apparently had a lot of faith that the mercenaries, however many of them there would be, would not try to gun her down; at least not at first.

Or, for that matter, that he wouldn't.  With his rifle, he could gun her down so easily, avenging Talon squadron with one shot.  It would be so easy to shoot her and blame it on the mercenaries.

It would be so easy.  He'd been willing to blow his commanding officer out of the sky with a pair of torpedoes to kill her before.  Now, nobody stood between her and him.  No innocent victims to be caught in the crossfire.  He could end the cries of Talon squadron for justice with one squeeze of the trigger.

And he certainly heard those cries.  Ever since he'd come to Corellia, ever since he'd come with her to Hoth, he could hear the screams of his eleven squadmates as they were massacred one by one.  As if by helping her, he was betraying them.

All those nights hearing the cries of Talon squadron in his mind, seeing each of eleven X-wings evaporate in a ball of fire, hearing the agonized screams of each of his pilots as the pressure within their spacecraft vented almost instantly into a hard vacuum, bringing the blood in their veins to a boil at their own body temperature.  He knew he could bring them all to an end, and deep down he knew that Lara probably wouldn't hold it against him.  The New Republic would probably even honor him as a hero for bringing down a traitor.

He had so many reasons to pull that trigger, but only one not to.

He didn't want to.

Kirney very nearly missed the first hint of movement at the Hangar door.  They had dressed in white, and against the almost-pure white background, they vanished.  She could see four of them now, but she knew that there had to be more of them that she could not see.  She sat, unmoving, watching them through the fire.  She forced herself not to open fire until they tipped their hands.

They stepped onto the metal floor of the hangar, moving smoothly, professionally.  Unlike the gunmen who had attacked her at the tapcaf back on Corellia, these men carried a variety of different weapons.  Some of which she knew well, others which she couldn't recognize.  Some of them dated back to the Clone Wars.  She didn't see any sniper rifles.  That was a stroke of luck, although mercenaries generally tended to favor power over accuracy.

There were eleven of them, she could see now.

Myn watched the eleven mercenaries approach in a very tight, professional formation.  Lara had been specific about letting her fire the first shot.

Actually, she'd been pretty specific as to exactly when he _should start shooting, assuming everything went according to plan.  But he didn't consider that terribly likely.  Mercenaries had a nasty habit of doing the unexpected._

They were within range now, but still too far off.  They were approaching carefully, but confidently, knowing they had the advantage of numbers on their side.  They knew that the sound of blaster fire would raise the alarm, and they weren't willing to alert their prey over one young woman with a blaster rifle.

Ghent had worked for Corva for eight years now; but never had he been given a job this big.  Twenty thousand for each of his men upfront, and a thousand bonus for him for each man still alive and uninjured at the end of the operation.  With a crew of over twenty (not including the pilot), there was a lot of money to be made on this one.  Corva apparently wanted his daughter back pretty badly.  The current plan was to send eleven of his men in a fake frontal assault, while simultaneously sending in a smaller force of four men in from the rear.  He could only see the one woman in the hangar, although he knew that they were a group of at least ten; including the children.  Corva had been specific in his orders: "kill the aliens," he said, "bring my daughter and the only children worth keeping alive to me."

Although he didn't seem to be too worried about his daughter and granddaughters getting killed.  He viewed his daughter as something of a traitor to her species.  Someone who, in his mind, didn't deserve the life she had.

He smiled.  There was no way she could defend the hangar and the rear entrance.  If he played this right, he could have Corva's daugther back to Corellia in time for dinner.

Nik stood at the small rear entrance, playing with a small shaped charge.  He'd laid a thin line of explosives around the door.  They were designed to cut through the solid metal door, rather than blow it up.  The advantage was that he could get through the door very quickly without making much noise.  And, if all went well, Ghent would have whatever resistance they could put up occupied in the hangar while he and his men grabbed the target and made off with it.

The three men with him stood in a half circle around the door, poised to push their way in the instant the door was opened.

"In position, Ghent."  He whispered over the comlink.

Ghent did not acknowledge Nik's call verbally, but simply responded with a double click on his comm.  He didn't want to give anything away, at least not yet.  Nik new to blow the door as soon as he heard blaster fire over the com.  He also knew exactly where to go.  They'd taken a thermal scan of the base from orbit, and knew the exact room where the target was staying.

_Now._

Kirney leapt to her feet, squeezing off a burst of blaster fire in the general direction of the mercenaries before her.  Then, as they opened fire, she dove and rolled behind a large boulder, pressing herself up against it as blaster fire roared around her.

Nik smoothly pressed the button on the detonator home.  With what barely amounted to a _pop_, the door was flung free to crash to the floor a few feet inside.  The four men stalked in.  The room was dim, as only the light which managed to penetrate the ice around it illuminated it.  This was the room where the rebels had kept the beasts they rode during their time at this base.  While that would be fascinating to historians, Nik really didn't care.  He was here to find Corva's daughter.

They moved quickly and silently down the hallway.

Myn opened fire.  The first two shots hit the mercenaries unawares.  They hadn't anticipated a sniper being positioned directly above them, holding a far superior position.  Two mercenaries dropped, limp, to the ground.  Their bodies effectively cut off from their central nervous systems.

_Sniper._  Ghent's mind immediately registered.  He cursed himself for not having realized it sooner.  He'd made one of the most fatal mistakes any leader could make.  He'd underestimated his opponents.

"Charge!"  Ghent pushed himself forward, if he could get his people close enough to the woman, the sniper wouldn't dare fire.

Nik came to a stop outside the door.  They wouldn't need to blow this one opened.  After all, the family had got _in_ there somehow.

He gently pushed the door open.  It swung silently on its hinges.  The room beyond was pitch black.  Even light amplification goggles wouldn't help in this room.  They needed light to amplify.  He stepped gingerly into the room, hearing the quiet footsteps as his men followed him.

"Prepared for extraction."

Ghent didn't show the relief he felt.  In a few seconds, he would able to order his ersatz attack to retreat, and they'd be on their way back to Corellia.

Myn saw them rushing, and knew he would never be able to take them all down before they reached Lara.

_Promise me, Myn._

There had to be some way he could protect her _and stop them._

He smiled, and swung his sniper rifle upwards.

Nik whirled around as he heard the door slam shut behind them, and the lock slide into place.

Almost immediately, the room was bathed in bright light, blinding after his eyes had adapted to the darkness.  Before his eyes adapted to the bright light, a large object slammed into the side of his head, flinging him with bonebreaking force into the metal walls.  He heard a number of screams, although he could not tell who was screaming, as his men were similarly flung aside.  He heard someone firing a blaster, but the firing wasn't the controlled, accurate bursts they'd trained to use, this was panic firing.

The supports to the hanger had been built hastily and with very little margin for error.  They'd also been stressed for pressure from the outside.  Snow pressing down on them, wind pressing against them.  The whole hanger was designed to withstand remarkable mechanical forces, but only from the outside, and only as long as the supports were intact.

Myn opened fire at the very end of one of the support beams, where the mechanical stress was the greatest, and the protection against it was the weakest.  He fired as many shots as he could into as tight an area as he could, melting the bolts which held the beam in place, assaulting its structural integrity.

Only a faint groan warned Ghent to look upwards as the support beam buckled under the stress, bringing a whole section of the ceiling down directly above them.  He saw the woman leap backwards, diving under the hull of her spacecraft for protection, he ordered his men to retreat, knowing full well that he would lose some of them.

Nik's eyesight finally cleared, and he wished it hadn't.  He saw one of his men being assaulted by two of the most deadly creatures on Hoth: a pair of Wampas.  Off to his right he saw a second of his men being slowly flattened as a third Wampa pounded his giant fists into his body; grinding each of the 206 bones in the human body into paste.  A fourth Wampa had the third of his men by his ankles, and was swinging him like a long club, beating him against walls, floors, any unyielding surface.

In desperation, Nik ran for the door, knowing that he'd heard it slam shut and lock.  He pulled on the door, as if he could force it to open by sheer force of will.  He desperately pounded the uncaring metal, begging whoever had closed the door behind them to open it; trying to appeal to the mercy of whoever stood on the other side of that door, and feeling guilt in what he knew would be his last moments, knowing that had he been the person on the other side of the door, he would never have shown any mercy.

He screamed in terror as one of the Wampas gripped him around the waist, dragging him backwards, slamming him into the floor.

The last thing he saw was the gigantic balled fist swinging down at his head.

Mercifully, his brain was flattened within its vessel before it had the chance to perceive any pain.

Ghent dove backwards as tons of snow, ice and metal rained down over his men.  He didn't look back to see how many had been caught in the avalanche.  He was certain he'd seen someone crushed by a section of metal beam.  He didn't stop.

When the roar of the collapse died down, he and four of his men were still standing.

"Men," he announced, "withdraw."

_Round one goes to us_, Myn thought to himself as his feet once again touched the ground.

"Good shooting."  Lara walked up to him.

"Kirney?"  That was Gus' voice over the com, "Your trap worked.  They went straight into the Wampa room."

Kirney smiled.  Wampas were attracted to warmth, so they'd set up the portable heaters in what had once been the War Room.  It had attracted the Wampas nicely; and had given the illusion that the family was occupying the room.

Myn shuddered.  That would not have been a pleasant way to go.

"We won this round," Kirney announced, "but they'll be back."

Kirney gingerly climbed over the mound of rubble which now stood in front of the _Hope.  They would be able to clear it rather easily, when the time came.  It was mostly snow and ice, and some well applied fire from the __Hope's forward blasters would clear it up nicely.  The hangar was still mostly intact, except for the section that had collapsed._

She dropped to the ground, looking back out at the entrance of the hangar.  They'd come with a bigger force than she'd expected.  They'd attacked with at least fifteen men, and she was willing to bet that they had at least another ten.  You don't plan an operation like this without planning to screw up.

She wondered what they would do next.

She felt a blaster push up against the back of her neck.

"You scream, you die."

Kirney whipped around, finding herself face to barrel with a heavy blaster pistol.

"Gara Petothel.  Don't even bother denying it; I never forget a face when it's attached to as high a bounty as yours."

Kirney didn't move, she glared at the man who held the blaster on her.

"You killed eleven of my men today, Ms. Petothel.  As a consequence, there are very few things I would like more than to make a nice blaster bolt-sized hole in your forehead."

Kirney remained silent.

"You have a lot of people on both sides who would love to get their hands on you, Gara; and I would dearly love to be the one to take you in."

"Gara Petothel's dead."  She told him.

"Yes, but imagine what it would be worth if _someone were to tell the Republic, or the Empire otherwise."_

"Probably a lot."

"Oh, don't get me wrong, I would love to take you in, but right now, you're not worth as much as the eight people you're harboring."

Kirney frowned.  She knew where this was going.

"So, that gives you room to negociate.  You give me Corva's daughter, and I won't bring you in _this time_."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I make sure the Republic, the Empire, every small security force and every bounty hunter knows exactly how to identify your ship."

"You son of a—"

"You know you can't win this."  He cut her off, "you only have four people who can shoot.  Even if you can keep us at bay, you know we'll never stop coming.  So you can give up the woman, her daughters and the aliens and get a couple more weeks of freedom; or you can keep fighting us off until we finally beat you."  He smiled nastily, "it's your call."

Kirney glared angrily down the barrel of the blaster.

Finally, she nodded.  "Okay.  Come back here after nightfall."


	7. Death

Disclaimer:  Nope, still not mine.

Chapter 7:

"How many more do you think they have?"  Myn's voice sounded tinny over the _Hope_'s internal com system.  They were busily clearing out enough rubble to get the large landing craft clear of the hangar if they had to make a quick escape.

"My money's on at least ten.  Between four angry Wampas and your rather impressive job of bringing down the house, we managed to take out eleven.  They were professionals.  They would have prepared for the possibility of a catastrophic screw-up on their first attempt."  She pulled the dual triggers; activating the laser cannons on the front of the _Hope._  The tons of ice and snow were clearing quite well.  The metal beams were going to be difficult to move, but she was fairly certain that the _Hope had enough overhead clearance to get over them even if they stayed where they were._

"You're expecting another attempt, then?"

Kirney nodded before she realized that Myn was on the opposite end of the ship in the other forward turret, and couldn't actually see her, "Yes.  This is Logos Corva we're talking about; probably one of the most ruthless gangsters since Jabba got dropped out of the race.  He may not have some of the resources that others out there have, but he knows that his reputation will take a fatal beating if word gets out that his daughter married a verpine; and for a gangster, reputation is everything."  She stopped for a moment, "if, on the other hand, word gets out that his daughter married a Verpine, but he killed him, and their alien children and brought his daughter back…"  She left that thought unfinished, "believe me, he'll stop at nothing to bring us in."

Myn was silent, realizing that she was right.  Jabba probably wouldn't have been so fearful a creature had it not been for his habit of throwing those who opposed him into the Sarlacc pit; or feeding them to his pet rancor.  If it hadn't been for his reputation of ruthlessness, he probably wouldn't have been much more frightening than your average nuna.  Even if Minos and the two human daughters ended up dead, it would serve as remarkable political capital for the gangster.  After all, what better way to demonstrate ruthlessness than to kill your own flesh and blood?

"So, why are we waiting here?  Why don't we make a run for it?"

"Where would we run to?  Do you honestly think that there's anywhere we could go where Gus and his family would be safe?  Even _if we kill every one of their troops, then make a run for hyperspace, and even _if_ they don't manage to make a call for reinforcements before we do; someone's still going to be on whatever transport brought them here, and they'll be able to track us through hyperspace."_

"So, we can't run, and if we stay here we'll be beaten sooner or later.  So what's the plan?"

She looked at the slowly evaporating mound of snow in front of the landing craft.  It would now provide ample protection against an assault and had shrunk just enough to allow the _Sentinel_ to get over it without scraping its vertical fin on the roof.  Perfect.

"That's enough," she announced, "We'll need something of a barricade when they attempt another assault."

"Roger that.  You didn't answer my question."

"For now, we wait until nightfall."

"And then?"

"Then we hope that whoever's running the show over there hasn't decided to grow a brain."

It was about twenty minutes later that the two found themselves in Kirney's cramped quarters on the _Hope.  Hoth spun remarkably slowly on its axis, and nightfall was still several hours off.  Kirney sat heavily on the bunk, wishing that the stress of the last few days could just bleed off of her._

"So, nightfall?"

"I'd bet my life on it, but if I'm wrong, Tonin and Clink will be able to warn us hours before they reach our doorstep."

"Why don't you make a run for it?  We'll bolt for Corellia, you and Tonin can take my Headhunter from there to wherever you can get to."

"What about you?"  Kirney looked up at him.  Her voice sounded tired.

"I'm a pilot with Rogue squadron.  I'll be fine."

"What about Gus?"

"You agreed with me a minute ago that we can't beat these guys."

"I did," Kirney conceded.

"You're gambling your life and your freedom on a fight you admit you can't win.  Why are you fighting for this?"

"Why are you always trying to convince me that I shouldn't?"  She demanded.

"What is it about eight people you don't know that's worth defending?"  Myn's voice raised, slightly.

"Myn, it's the right thing to do, and you know it."  For once, Kirney was the calm one in the conversation.

For what seemed like hours, neither one dared speak; as if neither trusted their own lips to say the right words.

Kirney broke the silence first, "Myn, you've spent a lot of energy in the last couple of days convincing me that I'm being stupid.  I _know_ that's not what you really think, so why are you trying to convince me that it is?"

Myn looked down at the floor for a long time before his eyes met hers again, "I lost you once, and a few hours ago, I came close to losing you again."

"Losing the woman who obliterated Talon squadron?  I'd think you'd be thrilled."  Kirney's voice was bitter.

"Is that really what you think?"

"Does it matter?  The real question before the court is what _you_ think."  Her eyes looked unflinchingly into his.

This time, Myn broke off the staring contest first.  He turned around and stared at the featureless wall across from the bunk, "Kirney, I almost shot down my own commanding officer to get to you.  A few hours ago, I could have taken you down without any collateral damage.  I didn't."  He paused, "I just don't want to see you hurt; not when I can do something about it."

He whirled around when he heard what sounded like a muffled sniffle behind him.  Kirney's eyes were bloodshot and a single tear rolled down each of her pale cheeks.

"What is it?"

She smiled, drawing in a shaking breath, "You called me 'Kirney.'"

For a moment, Myn found himself unable to speak.  The name had rolled off his tongue without him even thinking about it.  Somehow, in the last days, she had become Kirney to him.  She was no longer Gara Petothel, the woman who had sent Talon squadron to their doom; or Lara Notsil, the woman who had infiltrated Wraith squadron, and had lied to him every day for weeks.  She was Kirney Slane, and somehow, she had become a good person.  He had no words for what he was feeling at that moment.  Everything he thought was true felt wrong, somehow.  As if everything that had ever meant anything in his life was suddenly different.  And somehow, he found himself completely incapable of putting those feelings into words.

Kirney felt her heart melt as Myn gently kneeled in front of her and cupped her cheek gently in his hand.  _So much for the 'tough babe,' she thought to herself, savoring for a moment the warmth of his touch; wishing she could pause this moment as she could a holo recording.  She looked into Myn's dark eyes seeing none of the hatred she knew he must have felt for her two alter-egos.  They looked at her with a warmth and concern she had never seen in them before, even during her time with Wraith squadron.  Without a thought or a word, or, for that matter, a thought, her hand snaked gingerly behind his neck, smoothly pulling his lips inexorably towards hers.  Her hand pulled smoothly, but slowly, as though terrified that he would push her away in disgust.  Encountering no resistance, they rapidly closed the few centimeters which separated them._

The kiss was not short, nor was it hard and passionate.  It was long and sweet and filled with promise; but at the same time tentative and careful as if each party was afraid that the other would come to their senses.

Finally, it was Kirney who gently separated herself from him, looking deeply into his eyes as a smile curled the edges of her mouth.

"That's," she smiled at a memory from her past life, "more like it."

It was surprisingly easy, Kirney realized, to create a small blind spot in the sensors without the computer or the two astromech droids noticing.  It wasn't enough to hade an army, but a single intruder could probably sneak in undetected.  All she had to do was shift both the front and rear sensor arrays a few degrees to the right, creating a small space on the left side of the ship where the sensors simply didn't look, then convince the spacecraft that the sensors were properly aligned.  Not exceptionally difficult as the computer had expected her to tinker with the sensors after the cave-in to make sure they were aligned properly.

She then picked up the microphone and dialed in Ghent's comm frequency.

"Approach from the north-east in five hours.  I have created a sensor blind spot large enough for a single intruder.  Acknowledge."

A pair of clicks over the comm line informed her that her message had been received and understood.

_Five hours,_ she told herself, _this will all be over in five hours._

"Are you sure about this?"  Gus seemed concerned.

"Yeah, Kirney knows what she's doing."  Myn marveled at the fact that her new name came to him so easily now, "she told us to stay here."

"And you trust her?"

Myn nodded, "Kirney's really the strategist.  I just shoot people.  If she says this is the way to play it, I'm inclined to believe her."

"You have that blaster ready, right?"

Myn looked down at the Bryar pistol strapped to his thigh, "yeah."

"Alright, then."

"Don't worry.  This time tomorrow, it'll all be over one way or the other."

"Why do I not feel any better?"

"How about the fact that you and your family have about a one in fifty chance of still being alive this time tomorrow morning?"

"That would be it."

Kirney yelped in surprise and spun around reflexively, slapping the blaster which had just pressed against her back away with the knife-like edge of her hand, sending it flying.

"Oh, it's you."  Ghent stood before her.

"I would have liked to have more people with me."  He told her as Kirney walked to the corner of the dark room, recovering the blaster from where it had landed.

"Would you rather that they knew about this little intrusion?"

"No."

"Of course, having you alone has its benefits as well," She pressed the barrel of his blaster under his chin, her finger tightening on the trigger.

"You don't want to do that."  His voice was hard, but calm.

"And why not?"

"Because if I'm not back to my ship in one hundred and twenty minutes _with_ Ms. Corva, I gave my pilot orders to head to the nearest civilized planet, and distribute a certain data file to every bounty hunter he can find."

She glared at him, unmistakable fury burning behind her eyes.

"Oh, by all means, kill me.  But know that if you do, your days as a free person in this galaxy are over."

For a moment, it looked as though she seriously contemplated shooting him anyway.

He watched as the tension visibly drained from her body, and she smoothly flipped the blaster around to hold it out to him butt-first.

"Nice gun," she told him, "I ever tell you that I have one just like it?"

He took it from her and slipped it into his holster, "No."  He then swung a hard right hook, catching her under her left cheek.  The force was phenomenal and undefended, causing her knees to buckle and dropping her to the ground in an undignified sprawl, "now if you ever pull a stunt like that again, you'll get to know _this_ blaster a little more closely than I think you'll like."

He then drew his blaster, and gestured with it at the door at the end of the room, "ladies first."

_Got them flat-footed_, Ghent couldn't hide a nasty grin as he kicked the door open and pushed Gara inside, _just like she said we would._

They were all there, all nine of them.  A Wookie, a Givin, three Verpine and four humans.  Only one of the humans, the blond male, was armed.  He, wisely, didn't even attempt to reach for it.

"Nobody move."  His blaster swept over the group, he knew in the long room he could kill them all long before any of them could reach him.  He'd make it a point to shoot the man with the blaster first.

"Ms. Corva, come over here please, with your two daughters.  You do, and I promise I won't harm you.  If you don't, I'll kill each of your children in ascending order of age."  He looked directly at her, "that would mean that I start with your two daughters."

"Kirney, shoot him."  The human male spoke to Gara Petothel.  Ah, so that was what she was calling herself these days.  He locked that bit of information away for later use.

Petothel didn't move.

"Kirney, what are you waiting for?  Shoot him."

A sad look crossed Petothel's face, and she slowly drew her blaster pistol from its holster.

"I'm sorry, Myn," she said as the blaster leveled itself, pointing directly at Myn's heart.

A look of anguish spread over the man's face as he realized the depth of the woman's betrayal.  Ghent couldn't help but feel sorry for him.  "You are out of options, Ms. Corva.  Come over here, please."  He gestured at the space next to the human male, and smiled as the woman and her two daughters moved as directed.  "Petothel, if any one of them moves, shoot them all."

What happened in the next few moments occurred so fast, and in such a frenzy that Ghent's mind only barely registered what happened at all.  He opened fire at the five aliens who still stood at the end of the room.  He didn't know exactly how to check a pulse on any of these aliens so he simply made sure that he spent three or four blaster bolts on each one.  No humanoid body that he knew of could withstand that kind of punishment.  As he began, he saw Corva stand up and move to stop him even as the second of her children, the Givin, fell limp to the ground.  He saw Petothel change her aim slightly to aim at Corva.  The first of the Verpine hit the ground.  He had never seen anybody draw a weapon so fast, the human male drew what appeared to be a modified Bryar pistol and opened fire at Petothel.  His face was cold and emotionless, as if gunning down this woman took no more effort than shooting a wild animal.  The man's blaster fired six times, flinging Petothel backwards, slamming her against the metal wall.  The last of the aliens screamed in pain as the blaster bolts tore into him.  Corva was screaming at him to stop firing, begging him to stop.  The human was swinging his blaster towards him, trying to get him to stop, maybe in enough time to save one of them.

He was too slow.  Ghent spent the last of the energy clip in his blaster pistol firing at the male.  He dropped to the ground, his nerveless fingers releasing the blaster pistol before he had a chance to fire.  He slumped to the ground, his eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.  The sickeningly sweet smell of burning flesh filled the room.

"Ms. Corva, you have two family members left.  If you wish to keep them, I suggest you come with me."

She did not have tears in her eyes.  Instead, she looked at him with a defiant fury, as if daring him to shoot.

"Choose the daughter you'd like to see die first."  He aimed at the youngest daughter.  The two daughters were whimpering uncontrolably.  They had just witnessed in five minutes more violence than some people witness in their whole lives.

Corva nodded, defeated.

Ghent took a step backwards, and gestured for her to walk through the door.  She stopped at the doorway, looking at the unmoving body of Gara Petothel.  Ghent could see the tension building in her body he could almost feel the white-hot anger burning within her, flowing out of every pore and orifice.

"You _bitch_."  She kicked Petothlel's body generously in the side.  She then stood over her, punching the corpse in the face over and over again, "you traitorous, treasonous _bitch._"

"Now, Ms Corva."  He gestured at the door.

Corva stood, gathering whatever composure she could around her, and walked out.

Ghent's transport was a yt-2000 modified for passenger transportation.  As it blasted free of Hoth's atmosphere, the pilot was already making the calculations for a hyperspace jump.  Corva and her daughters had been remarkably silent during the trip to the transport.  Probably still recovering from the emotional lashing they'd received.

"Whmis?"  He spoke to the pilot.

"Sir?"

"The data file I gave you, you may as well delete it.  It's useless now."  He had promised that he wouldn't turn Petothel in on this trip, and he was a man of his word.

"Yes, sir."

"How long to Corellia?"

"Three hours, give or take a little.  As soon as we're clear of the gravity well, I'll make the jump."

"Keep me posted."

"Yes, sir."

Ghent turned away to leave.

"Um, sir?"

"What now?"

"We have a bit of a problem."  Whmis pointed through the conical canopy at the large craft which became visible just as the craft cleared the atmosphere.

"What is that?"  It looked like a Corellian Corvette, but not in any configuration he'd ever seen.

"They're contacting us."

"Let me hear them."

"…—identified transport vessel, please acknowledge and identify yourself immediately.  Repeat: unidentified transport vessel, please acknowledge and identify yourself immediately."  The almost mechanical voice sounded over the speakers.

"This is the yt2000 passenger freighter _Silent Runner.  To whom am I speaking?"_

"This is commander Narrol of the Imperial Navy," the voice replied.

Ghent frowned, "A little out of your neighborhood, aren't you?"

"Our 'neighborhood,' as you put it, is no concern of yours.  Our orders come from Warlord Zsinj himself."

He couldn't help but smile, "You're too late.  We have Corva and will be delivering her to her father."

The tone of the voice changed, "You will prepare to be boarded."

"Sir, they have a tractor beam on us."  Whmis announced.

"Can we break it?"

Whmis shook his head.

Ghent looked at the mammoth craft before them, his mind racing furiously, "Okay, let them take us in."

"Sir?"

"Trust me, Whmis."

"Yes, sir."

The _Runner_ slid smoothly into the small fighter bay in the nose of the Corvette.  It was a tight fit, but the _Runner was a relatively small freighter.  It settled gently to the floor._

"You and your daughters, come with me."  Ghent gestured at Corva with his blaster.  She stood, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.  He couldn't claim that he knew Logos Corva all that well on a personal level, all of their dealings had been strictly professional, but if the idea of being a prisoner of the Imperial Navy struck her as being a better option…

He pushed the three young women down the loading ramp, pushing them outside.  Two lines of Imperial Stormtroopers stood flanking a man he assumed was Commander Narrol.

"You will hand over the fugitives immediately."  It was Narrol alright.

"Or else?"

"You're in no position to negotiate you impudent fool.  Hand them over, and you may leave."

Ghent nodded, "That's a pretty good offer, but I have a better one."

"And what is that?"

He pulled his hand away from behind his back holding a large, very nasty limpet mine.  The troopers, along with Narrol automatically reeled back from it.  He took advantage of their hesitation to drop it, allowing it to fasten itself firmly to the metal bulkhead.

"There's enough of a charge in that mine to make this fighter bay unusable for months, not to mention enough to kill everybody in this room.  I have the detonator in my hand.  How much do you want to bet that I can set off that mine after you shoot me, and before I die?"

Narrol looked at him, his lips pressing together into a thin line.  He was struggling to control his anger.

"So here's my counter offer.  You let us go, and I don't detonate this mine.  If I so much as feel you _think about following us, I detonate.  How does that appeal to you?"_

Narrol had no cards left to play, and he knew it.  He could shoot Minos and her daughters, but then he would have no prize to offer.  He could shoot Ghent, but then they would all die.  Even if he let him go, then got him in a tractor beam again, Ghent would detonate, and even if that didn't break the tractor beam, their ship would be crippled.

"Men, stand down."  He waved his hand at the storm troopers, they all lowered their weapons.  "You may go," he announced, "pray that you don't cross our path again."

"_No!_"

Out of the corner of his eye, Ghent caught a blur of movement.  He turned to see Minos rushing him, her fists balled.  One, she applied generously to his stomach, while the other impacted savagely with his nose.  In a flash, she smoothly pulled the blaster from his hand and swung it to aim at the closest target; one of the stormtroopers.

She fired four shots, downing the trooper effortlessly, she then turned the pistol to aim at Narrol.  The troopers, trained above all else to protect their superior officers, opened fire at Corva and the two girls.  The screams from all three were buried under a hail of blaster fire as they were flung ungracefully to the ground.

"Stop firing, for the love of the Empire!" Narrol shouted.

Ghent looked down at the bodies.  He didn't need to look hard to see that all three were fatally wounded.  Minos, lying on her back, her eyes closed, had a tight circle of smoking wounds around her heart.  The two daughters had been shot somewhat more sporadically but the number and location of the wounds was no less fatal.  Ironically enough, Minos had saved his life by beating him out of the direct line of fire.

"It looks," Narrol told him, "as if neither one of us has a prize to offer."

Ghent nodded.  That was not entirely true.  Minos and her two daughters were worth quite a bit dead, and since he could not be blamed for the Imperials bringing him in, he would remain blameless.

"You will leave now."

Ghent nodded again.  He walked to the three bodies.  His blaster lay centimeters from Minos' hand.  He recovered it, and returned it to its holster.  Gingerly, he reached down for a pulse, knowing that he wouldn't find one.  He considered taking the bodies to provide proof to Corva when he saw him, but he wasn't willing to try Narrol's patience any more than he had to.  The holorecorder on the bottom of the _Runner would provide sufficient evidence for Corva.  He nodded respectfully to Narrol, then calmly stalked his way back up the ramp._

"One last thing."  Narrol's voice sounded out.

Ghent turned around.

"Take that with you."  He gestured at the limpet mine.

Ghent nodded.  It did Narrol no good to shoot him now.  He kneeled and disarmed the mine.

"When I said that you should pray we never cross paths again, I meant it.  Next time, I will not hesitate to destroy your craft."

Ghent nodded.

"That will be all."

The _Runner_ lifted off a moment later.


	8. Epilogue

Disclaimer:  Not mine.  Someone else's.

Re-did the last chapter.  Not much changed, just realized there was a scene missing.

Chapter 8:

Minos rolled on to her back and brought her hand to the burns on her chest.

"Ow," she groaned.  That had hurt… a lot, but it definitely beat being dead.

Her two daughters were regaining consciousness beside her, and feeling much the same pain she did.

"Are you okay, ma'am?"  Narrol's smiling face hung over her.

"A little sore.  That hurt."

"Consider the alternative."

She nodded, "I'm sorry, I didn't get your name."

He smiled, "Face Loran.  Commander of Wraith Squadron."

"My family?"

"We got word, they're fine.  We'll get you a basic Bacta treatment; you probably won't even need a full dunking, just a few patches; and you'll be just fine."

"I didn't know you could tune a blaster that way."

Face shrugged, "Neither did I.  Myn had to give us step-by-step instructions on how to do it.  Pretty brilliant, really.  The bolt has enough energy to burn, but not to kill.  It also induces shock in most vertebrates, so the blood pressure plummets and the breathing shallows and slows.  It won't fool any medical scanners, of course, but to a guy checking a pulse, it does a pretty convincing imitation of death."

"Doesn't make it hurt any less."  She winced as she tried to sit up, aggravating her wounds.

"No, it doesn't," Face nodded, sympathetically, "Incidentally, thanks."

"For what?"

He jerked his thumb at the stormtrooper who was picking himself up off of the metal floor, "We've all wanted someone to shoot Janson for a _long time."_

"So tell me," Wedge asked as Myn stood before his desk, "how _did_ you know that Hoth was due to become the base of operations for Wraith squadron?"

"It… made sense, sir.  Centrally located, low traffic.  Perfect place to put a somewhat secret squadron."  Actually, Kirney had put that one together before they'd even left Corellia.  She'd known that they had to convince whoever Corva was sending after them that the target was dead, otherwise they'd never been free.  Having Wraith squadron in orbit above them made them a rather convenient asset to use.

"What are your plans now, lieutenant?"

"I need to get Gus and his family to Coruscant, as I promised, then I'll return the craft to Corellia.  It's not mine, and the owner will want it back."

"Of course," Wedge nodded, "When are you leaving?"

"Within the hour, sir.  As soon as they've all been treated.  The Aliens fared far better than the humans did.  They're somewhat more resistant to blaster fire than we are."

Wedge smiled.  Givin and Verpine each possessed a tough exoskeleton which provided a fair amount of protection against blaster fire; and Wookies, they were just plain hard to kill, "and your treatment?"

"All but complete.  The burns were over a pretty small area right around the heart.  I'm lucky he was a good shot."

"Very well, dismissed."  He looked down at his notes, then back up at Myn, "Oh, Lieutenant?"

"Sir?"

"When you make it back to Corellia…"

"Sir?"

"Tell her I said 'hi.'"

Myn faked obliviousness fairly well, "tell who, sir?"

"Dismissed."  He watched as Myn spun around and marched towards the door.

"Lieutenant?"

Myn stopped a few feet short of the door, "Sir?"

"I don't know if you're aware of this or not, but you still have nine days remaining in your leave of absence."

"Yes, sir."

"Just to let you know: if you come back before those nine days are up, I will find some way of having you court-martialed."

"Yes, sir."

"Just so that you understand.  Dismissed."

Wedge was glad nobody could see him smiling as Myn walked out the door.

The large landing craft stood on a large floating landing pad over the endless cityscape of Coruscant.

"Well, Gus, I suppose this is goodbye."  Kirney held her hand out to him as the ten stood trying to shield themselves against the brutal winds at this altitude.

Gus nodded, "I suppose it is."  He looked over at Myn, "Thanks, we couldn't have done this without you."  He turned back to Kirney, "and you, I don't know how to thank you."

Kirney shook her head, "you don't have to.  You already helped me more than you know."

"I don't understand."

"I'm not sure I do either.  Thanks."  Kirney turned to Minos, "Minos, all I can say is 'good luck,' I wouldn't wish living with this guy on my worst enemy."  She smiled as she jerked her head at Gus.

"Well, he grows on you."

"Yeah, funny how that happens, isn't it?"  She smiled, "Incidentally, I hear you shot Wes.  Good job."

Minos shrugged, "He was the closest."  She reached behind her back, "Which reminds me," She held out Kirney's blaster to her, "I imagine you'll want this back."

"Thanks," Kirney's grin widened as she took it from her, "I take it he didn't notice the switch?"

"Didn't notice either of them.  When you handed him your rigged blaster to replace his, or when he took his own blaster back after I got gunned down."

"Yeah.  I thought for sure he'd notice you snatching his blaster from my hands when you were pummeling the crap out of me."

"Oh, sorry about that.  You'll live?"

"I'll live.  The bruises will be gone by this time next week."

Minos smiled warmly, "You're a good woman, Kirney, make sure you remind him of that."  She nodded in Myn's direction.

"I will."  She turned to Gus, "and just so you know, if I find out that she's not happy, I will personally hunt you down and shoot you."

Gus smiled, or whatever passed for a smile on a Verpine's face, "I don't think that'll be a problem."  He fished around in his pocket, then held out a few bills to her.

"What's this?"

"Well, I told you I'd pay the other half on arrival.  We've arrived."

Kirney didn't move, "keep it.  You've done enough."

"Take it.  So have you."  He cocked his head slightly.  He grabbed her hand by the wrist and pressed the bills into her palm, closing her fingers around them.

"Thanks, Gus."

"Don't spend it all in one place, and if you can, try not to spend it alone."  He looked at her, knowingly.

Kirney smiled, "I don't think you need to worry about that."

_Lara's Hope_ rose gently out of the atmosphere around Coruscant.  The deep purple of the stratosphere gave way to the black of space.  Kolot had left the bridge for a while, leaving the two alone on the bridge.

"So, what now?"  Kirney asked, sitting in the co-pilot's seat.

"I've got nine days leave of absence," he looked at her, "what say we disappear for a little while?"

"You sure you want to disappear with a wanted fugitive?"

Myn stood up, gripping her hands in his, pulling her to her feet.  He drew the diminutive redhead closer and whispered: "I could get used to it."

As the two drew closer, neither knew what was going to happen at the end of those nine days.  But as their lips touched in a kiss which embodied desperate hopes of a very uncertain future, all was right in the universe.

_The end_


End file.
